Daily Lecture and Discussion Notes
Chapter 5, Section 2
Did You Know
?
The first recorded patent for an industrial invention was granted in
1421 in Florence to the architect Filippo Brunelleschi. The patent gave him a three-year
monopoly on the manufacture of a barge with hoisting gear used to transport marble.
I. Italian Renaissance Humanism (pages 164–165)
A. The secularism and individualism of the Renaissance was most apparent in its intellectual
and artistic movements. One intellectual movement was humanism.
B. Humanism was based on the classics, the literary works of ancient Greece and Rome.
Humanists studied the subjects that are now known as the humanities—for example,
poetry, philosophy, and history.
C. Petrarch (fourteenth century) did the most to foster humanism’s development. He
generated a movement of finding forgotten Latin manuscripts, especially in monastic
libraries. He emphasized using pure classical Latin (Roman Latin, not medieval Latin).
Cicero was the model for prose and Virgil for poetry.
D. Fourteenth-century humanists had emphasized that the intellectual life was solitary,
rejecting family and community engagement. Humanists of the early 1400s took an
interest in civic life. They believed that the humanities and humanists should serve the
state. Many humanists served as secretaries to popes and princes.
II. Vernacular Literature (page 165)
A. Some writers wrote in the language of their regions, such as Italian, English, or French.
In the fourteenth century the Italian works of Dante and the English works of Geoffrey
Chaucer helped make such vernacular literature more popular.
B. Dante’s vernacular masterpiece is the Divine Comedy. This long poem is in three parts:
Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven (Paradise). Dante is led on an imaginary journey through
these realms, ending in Paradise, where he beholds God: “the love that moves the sun
and the other stars.”
Daily Lecture and Discussion Notes
Chapter 5, Section 2
C. Chaucer’s most famous vernacular work is The Canterbury Tales. His beauty of expression
and clear and forceful language helped make his dialect the chief ancestor of
modern English. This collection of stories is told by a group of 29 pilgrims going to the
tomb of Saint Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. Chaucer portrays the entire range of
English society.
D. Christine de Pizan was a woman who wrote in French. Her 1404 book, The Book of the
City of Ladies denounced the many male writers who argued that women by nature are
not able to learn and are easily swayed. She argued that women could learn if they
were able to attend the same schools as men.
III. Education in the Renaissance (pages 165–166)
A. Renaissance humanists believed that education could dramatically change human
beings. They wrote books on education and opened schools.
B. Liberal studies—history, moral philosophy, rhetoric, grammar and logic, poetry, mathematics,
astronomy, and music—was at the core of humanist schools because it was
thought that these subjects allowed individuals to reach their full potential. Liberal
studies helped people attain virtue and wisdom, which develop the highest gifts that
ennoble people. Liberally educated people also learned the rhetorical skills to persuade
others to take the path of wisdom and virtue.
C. Following the Greek ideal, humanist educators also stressed physical education,
including dancing.
D. The goal of humanist education was to create complete citizens. Humanist schools
provided the model for the basic education of the European ruling classes until the
twentieth century.
E. Females rarely attended these schools. Those that did received an education that
emphasized religion, morals, and domestic, artistic skills like singing and lute playing,
so they could become good Christian wives and mothers. They were not taught mathematics
or rhetoric.
Daily Lecture and Discussion Notes
Chapter 5, Section 2
IV. The Artistic Renaissance in Italy (pages 166–168)
A. Renaissance artists sought to imitate nature in their works so viewers would see the
reality of what they were portraying. They also had a new world perspective, one in
which human beings were the “center and measure of all things.” Many of the artistic
breakthroughs occurred in Florence.
B. Masaccio’s fifteenth-century frescoes are considered the first masterpieces of early
Renaissance art (1400–1490). A fresco is a painting done on wet plaster with waterbased
paints. Unlike the flat figures of medieval painting, Masaccio’s figures have
depth because he used the laws of perspective to create the illusion of three
dimensions.
C. The realism of perspective became a signature of Renaissance painting. The study
using geometry of the laws of perspective and the organization of space and light, and
the study of human movement and anatomy perfected this realistic style of painting.
The realistic portrayal of individual persons, especially the human nude, became one
of the chief aims of Italian Renaissance art.
D. There were similar stunning advances in sculpture. Donatello modeled his figures on
Greek and Roman statues. Among his most famous works is the realistic, freestanding
figure of Saint George.
E. The architect Filippo Brunelleschi created a new architecture based on Roman classical
buildings. His church of San Lorenzo in Florence does not overwhelm the worshipper,
as Gothic cathedrals might, but offers a space to fit human needs. Renaissance architects
also sought to reflect a human-centered world.
F. The last stage of Renaissance painting is called the High Renaissance (1490–1520). The
artistic giants Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo dominated this period.
Leonardo mastered realistic painting, but his goal was to create idealized forms to capture
the perfection of nature and the individual.
G. By age 25 Raphael was recognized as one of Italy’s greatest painters. His madonnas, in
which he also tried to achieve an ideal beauty surpassing human standards, were
especially admired. His famous fresco, the School of Athens, reveals a world of balance,
harmony, and order—the underlying principles of classical art.
Daily Lecture and Discussion Notes
Chapter 5, Section 2
H. Michelangelo was an accomplished painter, sculptor, and architects known for his
great passion and energy. His paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome
show the beauty of an idealized human being who reflects divine beauty. The more
beautiful the body, the more godlike the figure.
V. The Northern Artistic Renaissance (pages 168–169)
A. The artists of the Low Countries—present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands—took a different approach to realistically portraying the world. They
illustrated books and wooden panels for altarpieces, in part because their Gothic
cathedrals did not have the wall space of the Italian churches on which to paint frescoes.
The small scale made the northern painters masters of detail.
B. The most important artistic center in the north was Flanders. The Flemish painter Jan
van Eyck was among the first to use oil paint, which allowed the artist to use a wide
variety of colors and create fine details. Each detail was appointed as it was seen. At
first, northern Renaissance painters did not study the laws of perspective, however,
but achieved realism through observing reality.
C. Then such artists as the German Albrecht Dürer incorporated the laws of perspective.
His famous Adoration of the Magi keeps the northern emphasis on details but fits them
together harmoniously according to the laws of perspective. Like the Italian artists of
the High Renaissance, Dürer tried to achieve a standard of ideal beauty based on a
careful examination of the human form.